Language families and Branches of the World
Part I
Create a key and color code the following language families and branches and where they are spoken on
your map:
A.Indo-European
1. Germanic: English, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish) RED
2. Romance (Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Romanian) BLUE
3. Baltic Slavic (Bulgarian, Serb-Croatian, Polish, Slovak, Czech, Russian, Ukrainian,
Byelorussian) GREEN
4. Indo-Iranian (Persian, Pashtun, Kurdish, Punjabi, Nepali, Urdu, Hindi, Bengali)
YELLOW
B. Austro-Asiatic (Vietnamese) BROWN
C.Korean PURPLE
D.Japanese PINK
E. Afro-Asiatic (Arabic and Hebrew – Middle East and N. Africa) ORANGE
F. Dravidian
(southern third of India) BLACK
G. Niger – Congo (sub-Saharan Africa) GREY
H. Sino-Tibetan (most of E and SE Asia except for Japan, Korea, Vietnam LIGHT BLUE
I. Altaic (Turkey and the “stan” countries and Mongolia…except for Afghanistan and Pakistan
b/c Urdu is in the Indo-European family) LIGHT GREEN
J. Austronesean (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Madagascar) LIGHT ORANGE
Part II.
Now on top of your map, write in the following languages over the top of the regions where they are
spoken: ENGLISH, SPANISH, PORTUGESE, FRENCH, GERMAN, ARABIC, URDU, HINDI, RUSSIAN,
MANDARIN
Part III: Questions:
1. Which language family covers the largest area of Earth’s surface? Why do you think that is?
2. Why do you think Japan and Koran have their own unique language family?
3. What are the two languages families spoken by the largest number of people?
-
____________________________ (about 50% of the world)
-
______________________________ (about 20-25% of the world)
4. North American and parts of South America actually have many areas that are actually
Amerindian (Native American languages). Why do you think those language areas will likely
decrease in coming years?
5. What is the most linguistically diverse continent?
6. Why do you think English is classified on the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family
when it has several words in common with the Romance branch? (consider the history of
England)?
7. Pick 5 languages off the language tree and tell me the branch and family they belong to:
Language:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
Branch:
Family